There is a growing market for e-commerce in Southeast Asia with e-Conomy SEA 2021 projecting overall online spending growth to double by 2025 (or equivalent to the overall revenue of $362 billion) in the region alone. As such, e-commerce businesses in Southeast Asia have ramped up their strategies to target potential customers and promote their brands.
Due to this shift in spending behaviour, companies are channelling their strategies primarily to online marketing. With the global pandemic creating unprecedented changes in the market, users are spending more time online than ever before. Unfortunately for these companies, it is difficult to track and collect data with all the ad blockers in place. In the past two years, 586 million mobile browser ad blockers were in use, while 257 million desktop users enabled browser ad blockers. This precludes companies’ abilities to gather data through cookies and accurately examine the performance of their paid marketing strategies.
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These ad blockers and tracking prevention features function as security walls for digital privacy which is an important component in our increasingly digital world. Of course, the ideal scenario is to enable non-sensitive data to still get through, allowing marketers to do their jobs without compromising the privacy of their end-users.
Bridging the gap between data gathering and targeted marketing
Browsers with tracking prevention make it more difficult for businesses that use digital ads from gaining accurate data about their target customers. Among the issues that this poses is the blocking off of data on users’ customer journey analysis towards common analytics platforms like Google Analytics. With disabled cookies, businesses are left in the dark when it comes to determining whether someone is a returning user who has already engaged the brand in the past or an entirely new user who is seeing the business offerings for the first time. It is a double blow to e-commerce businesses, whose main source of engagement with customers comes largely from online resources.
Current tracking prevention developments have led to missing attribution data. This poses serious challenges for marketers who are unable to strategically target audiences according to the segments they belong to: new users or returning customers. This can make it difficult for businesses to determine how best to connect with their target market and convert these engagements into actual valuable leads. With all of these challenges that come with the complex task of navigating track prevention systems, we ask the question: is it possible to collect complete and accurate marketing data while still guaranteeing privacy for users? The answer is a resounding yes.
Striking a balance between accuracy and security
Businesses have attempted to get around adblockers through a series of strategies. One motivation found to dissuade users from enabling adblockers is their actual interest in what a business’ content has to offer. As such, setting up a paywall that would prevent users from accessing any of this content until they disable their adblockers is one way to encourage them to let businesses in. However, this can also backfire as users may decide not to access the content once they see a paywall or lead them to pirate the content elsewhere.
Fortunately, other innovations in the market have found a way around this tricky situation that is accurate, secure, and put a premium on the consent of users. By engaging in more privacy-friendly marketing strategies, e-commerce businesses are granted clearer access to consumer behaviour and overall customer journey analysis—non-sensitive data that won’t compromise users’ privacy.
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Tools like TraceDock, a first-party integration, allow marketers to collect crucial data in a privacy-friendly way. Operating parallel to Google Analytics, TraceDock enables first-party user identification and data collection. Furthermore, TraceDock enables cookie-less data collection, which allows businesses’ websites to recover data with or without user permissions to enable cookies. If cookies are enabled, the tool extends cookies (typically lasting within 1-7 days in browsers like Safari) to at least 180 days. On the other hand, when cookies are rejected, TraceDock forwards anonymous data hashed on the server-side instead. This is an important change for any business wanting to trace a customer’s journey on their brand.
Finally, TraceDock aims to address the issue of incomplete data collection from clients using browser adblockers (due to the latest iOS 14.5 update) through server-side transaction tracking. TraceDock connects transactions to the correct session data to reflect more accurate user activity on platforms like Google Analytics and Facebook. The tool’s plug and play feature requires no coding on businesses’ end, as Measurement Protocol templates are readily available and prepared for use. To get companies using it for the first time acquainted with how TraceDock works, parallel shadow testing is conducted during the trial period.
These features make TraceDock fully GDPR and CCPA compliant, bolstering e-commerce businesses while still protecting the privacy of potential clients.
Better service with accurate data
TraceDock was recently acquired by CM.com, a global leader in cloud software and conversational commerce that has helped businesses around the world create more organic interactions with customers through accurate analytics. CM.com’s services have allowed marketers to centralise their necessary data, giving them easy access to everything a business needs in one place.
CM.com has acknowledged consumers’ growing demand for convenient interactions with businesses and identified that this is a gap most brands need to fill in if they want to come out on top. Its Mobile Marketing Cloud solution lets marketers focus on their customers’ needs. With TraceDock in the equation, its ability to improve Facebook and Google Analytics can give companies accurate data to analyse consumer trends and make better decisions. CM.com provides businesses with the ability to naturally boost customer satisfaction using accurate analytics.
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As most consumers in the Southeast Asian region go online, e-commerce businesses can gain the upper hand by having a clearer view of consumer behaviour and preferences. However, given the concerns mentioned earlier, this should be done ethically.
Using its first-party data collection method, CM.com powered by TraceDock can help businesses overcome restrictions to digital marketing. It poses a solution to an issue that is largely unique to e-commerce, while simultaneously offering a new way for brands to operate, streamline, and improve their services.
For more information on CM.com, TraceDock, and the company offers, you can visit their website.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by CM.com
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